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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560461">cardinal points</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/athoughtfox/pseuds/athoughtfox'>athoughtfox</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, and it gets hard to tell where Narnia ends and they begin, in which Narnia grips them tight, in which the Pevensies are each tied to their point of the compass, is it prose? is it a poem? not sure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:21:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>405</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/athoughtfox/pseuds/athoughtfox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A crown for each point of the compass.</p><p>If you will go to the wandering shore, take no compass; the tide comes to gather all things to the East. / If you will go to the riddling woods, take fire which is the bane of wood and ice alike; there are no straight paths through the West. / If you will go to the singing fields, take the sweat of your back and your brow; the plains of the South are ever thirsting. / If you will go to the mountains, take a prayer and nothing else.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edmund Pevensie &amp; Lucy Pevensie &amp; Peter Pevensie &amp; Susan Pevensie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>cardinal points</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>to the glistening eastern sea </em>
</p><p>If you will go to the wandering shore, take no compass; the tide comes to gather all things to the East.</p><p>Do not think to outrun the sea in its eagerness for the breathless gold of the horizon. The thousand greens and grey-blues of its gown are always dancing, never still long enough to catch. Here are the waves which swallow all rains and laugh under all storms, with a heart so deep and full you could no more grasp it than you could grasp saltwater, for to love the sea is to love a thing you cannot hold.</p><p>
  <em>to the great western wood </em>
</p><p>If you will go to the riddling woods, take fire which is the bane of wood and ice alike; there are no straight paths through the West.</p><p>The forest wears many faces, different under every sun. Many are the days you might wander before you found a familiar one again, lost among the unmapped secrets of its hollows, the green-eyed shadows which do not blink, the slow-blooded trees which hide their softness from the brittling hands of the winter. For even as they rot in the close and whispering darkness, their branches are grasping, hungry for the light.</p><p>
  <em>to the radiant southern sun </em>
</p><p>If you will go to the singing fields, take the sweat of your back and your brow; the plains of the South are ever thirsting.</p><p>There you may walk under the dry and steady gaze of the sun, where the wind hums warmly through wide fields of rye, where the land opens its thick, rich beauty and the world eats its fill. Yearly is this basket filled, seed by seed; the long murmur of its scythed wheat, the gleaming promise of its apples, the reaching sweetness of its flowers, which are forever dying, and forever blooming again.</p><p>
  <em>to the clear northern sky </em>
</p><p>If you will go to the mountains, take a prayer and nothing else.</p><p>Go not to the North with pride, nor with wrath, nor with war, for the mountains with their vast and aching stillness will crush you with no more than a sigh. There are no others to shoulder this sky, so boundless and blue you could break your back just by looking up at it. All strong towers are built of their flesh; the world sits heavy on the soft dust of them, sleeping in their tender, trembling grip.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>also posted on my Narnia tumblr, same username</p></blockquote></div></div>
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